"What the f**k are you doing to people?" the slyly grinning Gwyneth Paltrow asks in the trailer for her new Netflix series, "The Goop Lab." I've been asking myself the same about her for years now. I finally think I get it, though. Goop is a monster of our own making.

Sure, you love your family, but have you ever felt like you just … need some space? Like an ocean or two? Have you ever really burned out on playing the Roman to a sibling's Kendall? Maybe then you've been feeling a degree of empathy for what that good-looking couple known as the Sussexes initiated this week — a royal mini retreat that's already been dubbed "Megxit."

A bottle of Prozac sits on my kitchen counter. It's the property of one member of my household, and a friendly companion to my own bottle of Wellbutrin that resides beside it. Those two containers are part of the day-to-day fabric of our lives and routines here, like our toothbrushes and sticks of deodorant. We simultaneously take them for granted and wouldn't dream of letting them run out. They help keep us fit for society and our own company as well. Sometimes, I look at those bottles and think of every bit of relief and shame and trepidation I felt when our doctors first suggested those pills might ease our  suffering, and I remember the complicated woman who helped create the modern face of depression and anxiety.

Was there ever a moment when “Cats,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatrical smash musical, was not considered high camp? Was it ever not an offhand shorthand for tourists and karaoke? I ask because the only answer I can come up with to the question of whether the movie musical of “Cats” is any good is another question. Is “Cats” supposed to be good?

There is nothing glamorous about a piece of trash on a dirty sidewalk. The red cardboard box had been discarded with such casual disregard, its owner hadn’t even cared that there was a garbage can a foot away. It lay there on the sidewalk, surrounded by dead leaves and a single candy wrapper. Nevertheless, all I could think when I saw it was, “My God, I miss smoking.”

Ithink it just comes down to this: Who doesn’t want to kill their friends sometimes? All I know is that on a brisk spring evening in 1989, my pal Carolyn and I went to the movies. We based our choice that night entirely on the fact that this movie starred the girl from “Beetlejuice,” and some guy who seemed be doing an inexplicable Jack Nicholson imitation. We have spent the subsequent 30 years of our lives quoting "Heathers" every chance we can get.

I don’t really know, if Jesus walked among today, his bucket list would include “Boo the president of the United States at a ball game” or “Kick Sarah Huckabee Sanders out of his restaurant” or “Take a pass on shaking Mitch McConnell’s hand.” But there’s definitely enough room in my Christian heart to believe it would be a totally viable option.

“It’s definitely not a good time to be a Nazi,” a baby-faced Hitler Youth drily observes in director Taika Waititi’s ambitious, polarizing coming-of-age epic “Jojo Rabbit.” Whether you find a line like that entertaining or not will likely tell you how you’ll regard the other hour and 47 minutes that surround it. Me? I laughed.

It's a classic American story. It begins with a dream, of course, a dream that that takes root in a faraway land and takes years to manifest, years of setbacks and economic hardship. But eventually, it becomes one of a woman who makes her way to the United States, where she becomes a larger-than-life icon. So if you think for one hot second that the story of the Statue of Liberty wouldn't be somehow intertwined with drag queens and Diane von Furstenberg, you don't know your history.

I spent a large part of my childhood in a state of wild jealousy of my cousin Amy.  Amy was delicate, blonde, and took horseback riding lessons and ballet class. I was husky, dark haired, and watched TV. Amy wore designer jeans. I wore the kind from JCPenny with the elastic waist.  And when Amy was 12, her parents her gave her the one thing I  wanted most as a kid — a mouth full of metal and rubber bands. It’s taken me decades, but I’m finally catching up. I may never have gotten that Barbie Dream House, but as God as my witness, I will someday soon have my own set of straight, pearly teeth.

There's no book out there called "What to Expect in the Eighteenth Year." During pregnancy and early parenthood, I never lacked for guidelines on how best raise my children. After a certain point, though, the advice pickings started to get slim, just as the challenges of my kids' teen years were kicking in hard.

She's been pushing buttons for three decades now as a comic, a reality star, an actress. But with one incendiary photograph, she became something else: an alleged credible threat in the eyes of the FBI and a vocal authority on the First Amendment rights for all of us. The owner of the second most famous blue dress in presidential politics has a hell of a story, and she's turning into a new documentary performance film, "A Hell of a Story." It's premiering for a one night only special Fathom Event on July 31. 

It’s the show that changed daytime television, and after 22 years, “The View” is still the one that has everybody talking. But beyond gossipy headlines about backstage battles and on-air arguments, there’s a deeper story about how a diverse and unlikely group of women redefined how we talk about news and politics. “It’s a culturally important show,” says award-winning journalist Ramin Setoodeh. He joined us recently to talk about his buzzed about literary debut — “Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of ‘The View.'”

Corruption in higher education? Why, it's as shocking as gambling in Casablanca. Yet even for the most jaded among us, there is exceptional poetry this week in the tale of rich parents going to truly idiotic lengths to secure their offspring something once quaintly referred to as "a good education."